

MS Excel spreadsheets were created to analyze data, giving great possibilities to visual tracking. But, of course, the manual method is riddled with the potential error: someone performs the calculations in Excel and eventually distributes the report to the key people, which is problematic because the data collected is not timely and not accurate. Manual reporting is also not lean.įor many small companies, getting rid of paper on the shop floor and using Excel templates for production analyses is a first step in changing the data collection process. And, it’s not accurate because no matter what, there will be the potential for human error. And most of the time, it happens to be a company owner’s responsibility to go over the papers, find mistakes, or double-check.Ĭollecting data via pen and paper is not timely because you don’t know what’s happening now. It takes a lot of time and effort to record and calculate the data when those efforts could be better spent on doing something else or growing the business. While later, it is transferred to a whiteboard, day by hour board, or production board. Sometimes workers write down data on a piece of paper every hour. It goes without saying that an Excel template is a step forward compared with the traditional method of pen and paper to record data from the shop floor.


You name it, and it’s probably included in a spreadsheet. Those can include data from manufacturing orders, downtime, maintenance schedules, quality data, and time and attendance. Not to sound redundant, but manufacturers keep literally everything in spreadsheets. Why do some manufacturers still use a spreadsheet?
